The amount of contact you have with Marya is up to you. Most students choose to submit the writing they’ve done in response to the reading and writing assignments every 2-4 weeks. Marya then responds to your work editorially, and suggests next steps for revision, new writing, and new reading, which you'll discuss with her in your periodic. Marya Hornbacher, Waiting-A Nonbeliever’s Higher Power, p. Big Book Quotes “When, therefore, we speak to you of God, we mean your own conception of God. This applies, too, to other spiritual expressions which you find in this book. Waiting: A Nonbeliever's Higher Power by Marya Hornbacher. For those who don't believe in God, feel disconnected from the ideas of God presented in organized religion, or are simply struggling to determine their own spiritual path, Marya Hornbacher, author of the New York Times best sellers Madness and Wasted, offers a down-to-earth exploration.

1. Marya Hornbacher Waiting Quotes
2. Marya Hornbacher Madness

Editor's note: Marya Hornbacher's latest book, 'Waiting: A Nonbeliever’s Higher Power,' explores what spirituality can mean to the recovering person who does not believe in God.

By Marya Hornbacher, Special to CNN

(CNN) - Kicked back with his boots on the table at the head of the smoke-dense room, the meeting's leader banged his fist and bellowed, “By the grace of this program and the blood of Jesus Christ, I’m sober today!”

I blinked.

This was not an auspicious beginning for the project of getting my vaguely atheistic, very alcoholic self off the sauce.

I wondered if perhaps I’d wandered into the wrong room. I thought maybe I’d wound up in Alcoholics Anonymous for crown-of-thorn Christians, and in the next room might find AA for lapsed Catholics, and downstairs a group for AA Hare Krishnas and one for AA Ukrainian Jews.

But a decade later, I’ve become aware that 12-step programs are home to people from every religion, denomination, sect, cult, political tilt, gender identity, sexual preference, economic strata, racial and ethnic background, believers in gun rights and abortion rights and the right to home schooling, drinkers of coffee and tea, whiskey and mouthwash, people who sleep on their sides or their stomachs or sidewalks.

Anyone who cares to sober up, in other words, can give it a shot the 12-step way. The official preamble Alcoholics Anonymous states: 'The only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking.”

And millions of people want that and find a way to do it in this program. I’m one of them. I was, not to put too fine a point on it, a raging drunk. Now I’m not.

It wasn’t magic; it was brutally hard work to get from point A to B. I do believe I’d be dead without the help of the people and the structure of the steps in AA.

But I don’t believe in God.

And this can be something of a sticking point when you’re sitting in a meeting room, desperate for almost any route out of hell, and someone cites “the blood of Jesus” as the only way to go. Or when you realize that six of AA's 12 steps explicitly refer to God, a Higher Power or He.

But this shouldn't be a dealbreaker. I’m going to make a lot of old-style AA’s cranky with this, but it’s perfectly possible to sober up sans belief in God.

At first that wasn’t clear to me. It’s unclear to most people because AA has a reputation as a cult, a religion unto itself, a bunch of blathering self-helpers, a herd of lemmings or morons, and it isn’t those things, either. It’s a pretty straightforward series of steps, based on spiritual principles, that helps people clean up their lives in a whole lot of ways.

But if you are of an atheistic or strongly agnostic mindset, chances are you’ll walk into a meeting, see the steps hanging on the wall and want to scream, laugh or walk back out.

I tried another tack: I made a valiant attempt to believe. I figured a) these people were funny, kind, and not plastered; b) they believed that some kind of higher power had helped them get sober; c) they knew something I did not.

So I did research. I read every word of AA literature I could find. I read up on the history of half a dozen important religions and a wide variety of frou-frou nonsense. I earnestly discussed my lack of belief with priests, rabbis, fanatics and my father.

People told me their stories — of God, the divine, the power of love, an intelligent creator. Something that made all this. Some origin, some end.

I told them I believed in math. Chaos, I said. Infinity. That sort of thing.

They looked at me in despair.

And not infrequently, they said, “So you think you’re the biggest, most important thing in the universe?”

On the contrary. I think I am among the smallest. Cosmically speaking, I barely exist.

Like anything else, I came into being by the chance, consist mostly of water, am composed of cells that can be reduced and reduced, down to the quarks and leptons and so forth, that make up matter and force. If you broke down all matter, the atom or my body, you’d arrive at the same thing: what scientists call one strange quark, with its half-integer spin.

And I find that not only fascinating but wondrous, awe-inspiring and humbling.

I believe that the most important spiritual principle of AA is humility. The recognition that we are flawed, that we can and must change and that our purpose not only in sobriety but in life is to be of service to others.

I believe that I exist at random, but I do not exist alone; and that as long as my quarks cohere, my entire function on this hurtling planet is to give what I can to the other extant things.

That keeps me sober. Amen.

Marya Hornbacher Waiting Quotes

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Marya Hornbacher.

Marya Justine Hornbacher (born April 4, 1974) is an American author and freelance journalist.

Her book Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia, is an autobiographical account of her struggle with eating disorders, written when she was twenty-three.^[3] This is the book which originally brought attention to Hornbacher.^[4] It has been translated into sixteen languages and sold over a million copies in the U.S.

Bibliography[edit]

Her first book was Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia (see above). This book was updated in May 2014, 15 years after the original date of publication, with a Post Script by Marya Hornbacher, 'Hornbacher, an authority in the field of eating disorders, argues that recovery is not only possible, it is necessary. But the journey is not easy or guaranteed. With a new ending to her story that adds a contemporary edge, Wasted continues to be timely and relevant.'^[5]

Her second book is the critically praised 2005 novel, The Center of Winter, which follows a family in the aftermath of a suicide.

Her third book, published in April 2008, a memoir titled Madness: A Bipolar Life, chronicles the years following Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia when she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Her fourth book, published in 2010, is the recovery handbook Sane: Mental Illness, Addiction, and the Twelve Steps written as a guide to working the Twelve Steps for people who suffer from both addiction and mental illness.

Her fifth book, published in 2011, Waiting: A Nonbeliever's Higher Power, explores spirituality and what that can mean to someone recovering—from addiction, mental illness, or both—who does not believe in God.

Her second book, The Center of Winter, published in 2005, received excellent reviews, and her second memoir, Madness: A Bipolar Life, was published in 2008. It was met with immediate praise and hit the New York Times Bestseller list. Sane: Mental Illness, Addiction, and the 12 Steps, was published in 2010, and Waiting: A Nonbeliever's Higher Power was published in 2011. Both were finalists for the Books for Better Life Award. Also, within the past several years she has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in both non-fiction and poetry.

Hornbacher plans to have her sixth book out in early 2019. In an interview in August 2015 conducted by Adam Walhberg of Minnpost, Hornbacher reveals more about the inspiration behind her book and the book itself. She speaks about 'the new edition of DSM 5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) [which] was released and it created...an...uproar in psychiatry and brain science.' ^[6] In this book, she is writing profiles of 12 people who suffer with mental illness to explore these philosophical issues on a more human level.

Biography[edit]

Marya Hornbacher was born in Walnut Creek, California and raised in Edina, Minnesota. She is the only child of Jay and Judy Hornbacher, professional theatre actors and directors. When Hornbacher was fourteen years old, she was accepted into the prestigious arts boarding schoolInterlochen. She later enrolled in the University of Minnesota and started writing for the university's student newspaper The Minnesota Daily. In the fall of 1992, she entered college at American University in Washington, D.C. She eventually obtained her degree in philosophy and poetics from the New College of California.

Personal life[edit]

Hornbacher married Julian Daniel Beard in 1996, but they divorced after the success of Wasted. The marriage, and eventual divorce, is also discussed in Madness where she attributes the nuptial failure in part to problems with drugs and alcohol, and largely to her ill-managed bipolar disorder. Hornbacher then married Jeff Miller.

She has now been sober for more than seventeen years (since the summer of 2001, according to Madness). She was honored with a major award, the ASCAP Award for music journalism, for her profile of jazz great Oscar Peterson (published January 2005).^[7] She is also a two-time Fellow at Yale. She still publishes occasional journalistic pieces, as well as short fiction and poetry.

As of 2014, Marya is working on several projects. She is currently working on a nonfiction book about sex and sexuality in literature. She is also completing a manuscript of poetry and a manuscript of essays and has a novel in the works. Along with her journalism and articles, she teaches in the graduate writing program at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL.

References[edit]

1. ^Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia
2. ^Madness: A Bipolar Life
3. ^http://www.maryahornbacher.com/
4. ^Oo, Pauline (October 4, 2011). 'Pulitzer-nominated author offers insights on mental wellness'. St. Catherine University. Retrieved February 25, 2014.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
5. ^'Wasted Updated Edition'.
6. ^'The next Marya Hornbacher book is coming and could be a game-changer'. MinnPost. Retrieved March 5, 2016.
7. ^'New York Times bestselling author Marya Hornbacher to speak Oct. 28'. Appalachian State University. Retrieved February 25, 2014.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)

External links[edit]

Marya Hornbacher Madness